{"id":2992,"date":"2012-11-13T08:43:35","date_gmt":"2012-11-13T12:43:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/sj\/?p=2992"},"modified":"2012-11-13T09:20:44","modified_gmt":"2012-11-13T13:20:44","slug":"pathological-science-or-wish-fulfilment-by-irving-langmuir","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/2012\/11\/13\/pathological-science-or-wish-fulfilment-by-irving-langmuir\/","title":{"rendered":"The Six Symptoms of Pathological Science, by Irving Langmuir"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.hcs.harvard.edu\/~sjklein\/langmuir-pathol.pdf\">This overview of pattern-creation in the guise of science<\/a> and its mob effect on whole fields must be read and relished.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Six Symptoms of Pathological Science<\/strong>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The maximum effect observed is produced by an agent of barely detectable intensity. \u00a0The magnitude of the effect is largely independent of the intensity of the cause.<\/li>\n<li>The effect is of a magnitude close to the limit of detectability, or many measurements are necessary because of low statistical significance of individual results.<\/li>\n<li>There are claims of great, even extraordinary, accuracy<\/li>\n<li>Fantastic theories contrary to experience are suggested (with enthusiasm)<\/li>\n<li>Criticisms are met by <em>ad hoc<\/em> excuses thought up on the spur of the moment \u00a0(this may be contagious)<\/li>\n<li>The ratio of supporters to critics rises to somewhere near 50%, then falls gradually to zero.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Also, note that the &#8220;Allison effect&#8221; and mechanism is the most amazing example given, and may show something different than standard pathological science: it was considered good science for over a decade, and by hundreds of practitioners.<\/p>\n<p>From a talk famously given by <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Irving Langmuir\">Langmuir<\/a> (1932 Chemistry N&#8217;Laureate) in 1953, transcribed by Robert Hall, illustrated by <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Physics Today\">Physics Today<\/a>, republished and promoted by professors and <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Richard Muller\">authors<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This overview of pattern-creation in the guise of science and its mob effect on whole fields must be read and relished. The Six Symptoms of Pathological Science: The maximum effect observed is produced by an agent of barely detectable intensity. \u00a0The magnitude of the effect is largely independent of the intensity of the cause. The [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1202,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[206,60576,213,214,709],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-la-mod","category-gustatory","category-metrics","category-poetic-justice","category-wikipedia"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iVvB-Mg","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1202"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2992"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2992\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2995,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2992\/revisions\/2995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}